Terms of Service

First of all, Christian Chirp belongs to the owners and staff of Christian Chirp, which means that we get to make the rules, and if you decide to use Christian Chirp, you are agreeing to abide by our rules, which we can make up and change as we go along.  On that note, we encourage you to check back here every so often to see if our Terms of Service have changed in any significant way.  To be honest, we do not expect that to happen, but we learned long ago to never say never.

Third Party Content

Third party content can and will, in any of a variety of forms, appear on Christian Chirp.  While you can use it, you may do so only for personal use and making no changes to it.  If you want to do any more than that with it, it is up to you to get the necessary permission from the provider(s).  By the way, we cannot take any responsibility for the truthfulness of any claims, warranties or fitness for any particular purpose, whether stated outright or implied; just because links shows up on Christian Chirp does not mean that we are endorsing them or any of the content or other links you may find when you get there.

Advertising

We do not know about you, but we have yet to find a way to pay our mortgages or fill our gas tanks with good will.  While Christian Chirp is free to use, we reserve the right to accept advertising in any of a variety of forms, or even advertise our own products and services on here or through our affiliate sites.  In exchange for Christian Chirp granting to you the use of its services, you agree that Christian Chirp, its affiliates, and its third-party advertisers and partners can place advertising on the Christian Chirp site.  Note that this includes advertisements that may appear under an affiliate arrangement which provides compensation on a percentage of each sale.  We are also compensated for certain ads on a pay-per-click basis.  This means we earn money when these ads are clicked on by visitors to this site and/or our affiliate sites, as appropriate.

Submitting

OK, here we go.  Christian Chirp bills itself as the Christian alternative to Twitter, so we always receive a lot of questions, comments, and criticism about how we make decisions regarding content submissions.

First off, this is a dictatorship.  While we try to act as benevolent dictators, it is a dictatorship nonetheless.  We feel we have to act, sometimes with great speed and certainty, on behalf of the greater good of the folks who are looking for a clean place to which to come in order to communicate and exchange ideas.  Christian Chirp is free for you to use, and there is no law that says you have to use it all. It is on this simple basis that we hang our right to monitor the site as we choose.  While we do not like banning members or deleting Chirps, we will not think twice about it if your behavior is obviously destructive or juvenile (which is oftentimes the same thing). 

To submit content, you must agree to the following:

·         You will not submit spam, and we place the burden on you to determine at the outset if what you are submitting IS spam.  Here is some free guidance: Do not post links to any site whose sole mission is to sell a good or service, unless, of course, it is done for humorous reasons and contains no affiliate benefits.

·         You will not solicit or post any sexually explicit images (actual or simulated).  You know better than that.

·         You will not post anything that exploits children or minors or that depicts cruelty to animals; easy enough, we hope.

·         You will not post profanity, to include abbreviated or graphical representations of profanity.

·         Because we publicly bill ourselves as a Christian site, we will not tolerate submissions of content that are examples of sensationalistic disrespect to the Christian faith, or to any bona fide religion, for that matter.  In other words, while you are free to challenge religious teachings or interpretations or ideas on any matter or issue, you may not do so in a vulgar manner.  This includes doing silly things like selecting an avatar that portrays Jesus drinking alcohol or having sex.  Let us keep the discourse elevated, people, and if not elevated, at least out of the gutter. 

·         You will not post any copyrighted or trademarked materials without the express permission from the owner.  If you do, and you cause problems for us by doing so, we will use every means at our disposal to seek redress.  

·         You will not attempt to overload our system with a high number of submissions from one source in a short period of time.

·         You are absolutely allowed to self-promote through Christian Chirp, as long as you abide by the guidelines noted above.

·         In the end, deciding what to permit and what not to permit is entirely up to us, but that does not mean we have any desire to use that privilege recklessly.  Unfortunately, it is too difficult to define and account for every example and definition of inappropriate content and still keep a Terms of Service at all manageable.  We will just paraphrase U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart and say that while we cannot always intelligibly define it, we know it when we see it.  That said, if you do find yourself on the short end of the banishment or deletion stick, feel free to inquire as to why we made the decision to act as we did.

Unauthorized Activity

In the course of using Christian Chirp, you agree that no one employed by or in any way related to Christian Chirp will be held accountable for your actions, legally or financially.  To reiterate what we said above, if you use the resources of Christian Chirp to break the law or otherwise engage in any type of unauthorized activity, you are on your own, and if we face any troubles here because of your actions, we will take it up with you in court.

Copyright and Trademark Infringement

We are in the idea business here, and so we believe intellectual property rights to be a big deal…yours as well as ours.  On that note, if you are a copyright holder and believe that your work has been misappropriated in any way, let us know.

Disclaimer of Warranties

The nature of Christian Chirp in particular, and social networking and micro-blogging more generally, is such that we do not realistically have the opportunity to examine every single content submission.  While we will always do our best to police the content for appropriateness and accuracy, errors will occur, and we are not responsible for any of these errors, either on Christian Chirp, on our affiliate sites, or on any third-party sites; in other words, Christian Chirp is made available to you on an as-is basis.  This includes even minor things like our own spelling or typographical errors, which we freely confess to making at times.  Again, your use of Christian Chirp includes your acceptance of the service as-is.